32-20 Blues part 4

 Mid-November now, and deadlines are approaching.  I decided to take care of two of them today, or at least do more work on two of them.  One thing is the holiday card for this year.  I don't expect to have them all out by the New Year (those who know me and get one of my cards, expect this), but I do like to post a finished copy here on the blog on Christmas Day, so that means I have a little over a month to get it done.  The other thing I have to finish soon is my contribution to the Robert Johnson project, and my goal is to have three images done by early 2023.  I believe Tom's deadline had been something like February or March, but I'd rather get the first step done before then, in case there are some changes.  I can't print anything until I get some more ink, so I should order some soon.  I can't cut and print the card until I have wood the right size for the task.  I can start cutting the 3rd Robert Johnson block, as that is drawn at least. So today my plan was to go to the Studio in the late morning, cut two pieces of wood, one of which will be my card block, and start cutting the design for the 3rd Robert Johnson block.

One thing I took into account is that temperatures took a nose dive this week, which could mean my Studio heater getting a real work out today.  It works fine, but is ceiling mounted right by the windows, and the thermostat on that wall.  Which means that in cold weather it runs more minutes than it is off, and it is quite noisy.  That might happen today, so I decided to bring some loud music, the kind of things that sound good at high volume, which I might need today to hear it over the heater. Lightest to carry are the discs in individual plastic jewel cases (as these things are called), and one that fit the bill was my home burned double set of cow punk classics, albums I got in Carbondale from a Texan (Dave Kirkland) from the Hickoids and Jon Wayne.  (details can be found on this blog back in December 2019) Music on, then put together what I needed for part one.  My old saber saw died on me last year (after using it for at least 25 years, and it was used at that point), but luckily I found a block that I could use.  Got a new one last winter, which has already been used for a number of projects, and today it was used again.

With that done, I moved right to the other block, already drawn.  I started as I always do, cutting out the outer border of the image.  One side is the hard clean edge of the board itself, so I had three sides to cut. I got that done, the started a few of the white spots in the image.  Did the window, and the bright parts of the pillow, and decided to call it a day.  Results of the day's cutting can be seen below:

As it turned out, the outside wasn't cold enough to set off my thermostat, so the heater never came on.  However, it's a good thing I had some raucous music there today, as a whole bunch of people set up in the loading area, and were using power saws, stirring up quite a racket, almost drowning out my rock and roll, just a few feet away.  This is space normally used by Bobby Duncan, but it wasn't him.  They knocked off and cleaned up around noon (lunch?) and were not back when I was done and leaving, but if they are there next time I have to work, I may talk to the office.